


Jojostuck Chapter 12 - Sound Judgement

by Griever1337



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2020-03-09 08:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18913687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griever1337/pseuds/Griever1337
Summary: Starting with Chapter 12, Griever decided to start writing future parts of Jojostuck on Ao3, before eventually going back and adding panels in on the fanventure version.Jojostuck is a fun little crossover fanventure where John Egbert, fresh from the Game Over timeline, helps out Rose Lalonde in a bizarre alternate timeline where almost every important character has mysterious, ghostlike entities with weird powers that fight alongside them as a manifestation of their will. These are known as Stands, and Rose just awakened hers. John must help Rose take down an inexplicably evil, vampiric Jade Harley in a journey from Japan to Egypt to save her mother (who, for some reason, is Ms. Paint). Absurd and dangerous antics occur frequently. Eridan is a main character.Ultimately, this is a character replacement AU in which the Homestuck characters replace those of Jojo Part 3, based largely on the FIRST SET of official Homestuck Tarot Cards.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read Jojostuck yet, please do so before reading this! I'll try to link a quick summary of Jojostuck eventually so you can be up to date on things that happened in the first 11 chapters if you're just reading the fanfic version, but until then, this is just an add-on to Jojostuck proper, which can be found here: https://mspfa.com/?s=13714&p=1. 
> 
> Please enjoy!

You are now WQ, and upon testing the powers of your ring-based teleportation abilities, you’ve found yourself all the way in New York City. You stand atop a large skyscraper, the sword in your stomach glinting in the sunlight and your wings dramatically spread out behind you, as you gaze at the massive, building-laden island sprawling beneath you. The sunset bathes the skyline of New York in a brilliant, almost supernatural red hue. 

This city is your home, and it’s been your home for the last forty years. And it’s only grown more and more ostentatious and riddled with buildings ever since you first moved here with your husband, whose name is often abbreviated to WK. You allow yourself a brief moment to think about how he’s doing. You don’t want to worry him about the details of this mission to kill Jade and save your daughter - you haven’t even told him that Ms. Paint is in danger. It would only freak him out.

You’re not here for your husband right now, ultimately. You’re here to find backup, and you know just who to bring back. You just need to find him.

==> WQ: Use Hermit Purple to look for whoever you’re looking for. 

Ghostlike purple thorns writhe out of your good arm. Hermit Purple is a stand of divination. So long as there’s a medium for it to transmit information through, you’ll be able to find whatever you need. Previously you’ve used it to great effect alongside a camera and a television, but with the powers endowed upon you thanks to the ring, you might not need something that’s so neatly fit for this transmission. You’ve evolved past that need for now.

You fly down gently to the skyscraper’s nearest pane of glass, and Hermit Purple jabs into its four corners. The reflection shines for a moment, before the image reflected by it is no longer of you, but of Wall Street. Three young men in colorful suits wearing sunglasses stand amongst the hustle and bustle of the New York Stock exchange. The one wearing a red suit carries a briefcase. They look so alike that an untrained observer would be quick to call them twins, but they seemed to be more than that. Exact duplicates of each other, strategically playing Wall Street as if it were a god damn fiddle.

The image flashes before changing again. Another young man sat in a newspaper room. Another duplicate, another copy. He watches stacks of newspapers being printed out at an extraordinary rate, each emblazoned with a bizarre, ahead-of-its-time art-piece in the comics section. The young man looks pensively at all this - at least, that's what one would guess if they were to see him. It's hard to tell behind the shades.

Once more, the glass shines, before the image changes again. The same young man - perhaps even another copy of him - sits at a messy studio dressed casually, scribbling comics on a page. They’re the same ones you saw on the newspaper earlier, in the previous vision. A closer look at them shows that the characters seem to be pasted almost haphazardly along the page, often outside of the lines, and often in the exact same pose. It looks a little blurry and pixelated on the page as well, which doesn’t make any sense.

One last time, the pane of glass glints in the sunlight. A different tower appears, and atop that tower is one last copy of the young man you’ve been searching for - one wearing a cape that flaps in the winds of Manhattan. Except it’s obvious that he is no copy. He’s the original. You’ve found him.

You retract your ghostly thorns and teleport in a flash of green light, and find yourself right behind him. He turns towards you, noticing your presence, and frowns before turning his head back to the city in front of him.

His face was the spitting image of your grandfather, Dave, from a time long before you were born - even before your father and mother were born. But you can recognize that face all the same. You weren’t expecting to get nostalgic, but you begin to miss him. He taught you a lot back when he was alive, and you feel a tinge of guilt at not keeping true to all his ideals. For a man who was 70 years old in 1939, he was pretty fucking woke. 

He’d often say shit like “you know, sitting on the sidelines in the face of oppression is tantamount to siding with the oppressors” right before having dinner with you. It was particularly memorable that time you beat up a corrupt racist cop in this very city. You wonder to yourself if you’re still the same person who would do something like that. You’re not sure you’re quite that cool anymore.

You shake your head - now isn’t the time to reminisce. As you stand there lost in thought, grains of sand begin to float from behind you towards the man. At first, you barely noticed. But the slow torrent of sand coming from the ground changed into veritable jetstreams of sand, flying towards him from multiple areas in the city. The streams of sand all coalesce in a pile behind him, before simply disappearing. He must not want to show off his stand right now, but the power he holds is clear. He sighs, and stands up before turning to you and speaking to you for the first time since your first meeting, almost a year ago.

DAVE: so were really doing this huh


	2. Chapter 2

==> Be Jade. 

You are now Jade Harley.

You sleep soundly on the cold, hard floor of the pyramid hall, curled up besides Roxy as she plays the lookout. The landscape of your mind is an endless, frigid black void, but it only stays that way for a couple of brief moments. Thoughts begin to occupy the space inside your head slowly - at first, only meaningless gibberish that serves nothing. More and more coherent thoughts begin to rise to the surface of your dreamscape, like bubbles rising to the surface of the ocean.

In your blank dream, you begin to think of Rose. Why she's fighting you. What drives her to battle wave after wave of your minions, and punch out every member of your newfound family. Your resurfacing alone has endangered her mother's life with sickness, like Jane's father and your father before hers. And Rose is, mentally, more than ready to kill you to save her mother. You could never say the same thing about your father - after all, you were the one who poisoned him to death, after the years of negligence and self-pity and uselessness became unbearable.

Your father once told you that you almost killed him with a flintlock pistol at the age of 3. 

You kinda wish you had.

Why are you even thinking about your father at all, you wonder to yourself, as your surroundings begin to take form. Why would someone so pitiful, so...so unimportant take up any piece of your mind? You've fought and lived and survived and existed so much longer than he did. You're far older now than he ever was.

You've spent two of his lifetimes barely alive in a coffin at the ocean floor. You've spent two of his lifetimes sleeping, waking, trying to make the only possible connection you could. Trying to stave off what would become a century of solitude. Trying to battle the fear of succumbing to what was seeming more and more and more like a fate worse than death, trying to distract yourself from the biting cold you didn't feel anymore and the shadowy darkness you were sure you had gotten so used to. 

After all of that, after your second chance at life - why should your good-for-nothing dad occupy even the smallest space in your mind?

You open your eyes inside your dream, and find yourself at the bottom of the ocean floor, outside the coffin you slept in. As a vampire, you don't need to breathe, but even if you weren't one, the ocean seems to be a mere backdrop. The pressure from the ocean depths and the cold wetness of sea water are nonexistent. It’s not dark, as one would think it’d be - rather, the deep blue of the ocean stretches as infinitely as the black void you found yourself in previously. 

You hear some crying in the distance. It's the ghost of your father, rubbing his eyes under his spectacles vigorously with a handkerchief. He sheepishly turns away as you notice his presence. All for the better too, you’ve wasted enough time thinking about him. You certainly don’t want to speak to him. He’s a better father to you dead than alive. 

You curiously stretch what seems to be the body of your dreaming self, and sit idly on an ocean rock next to your own coffin. Your thoughts turn towards the days leading up to his death, and your surroundings change. The rock you sat on is now a chair in the shabby little cabin you lived in until you were thirteen years old, and an apparition of your father chokes out a few coughs in his bed, lying next to a number of bottles of wine. He spent a fair bit of his time drinking, but never to the excess he had in his dying days, trying to drown out his sorrows one way or another. It was sickening to you - almost as sickening as all the neglect and the loneliness and the endless cheating and sleeping around with other men and women. Always looking out for number one, always manipulating everyone’s perspective so that he wasn’t the bad guy, always escaping responsibility, always...always being so pathetic.

You wonder if he knew, in his last few hours, that you were sick of him, to the point of trying to kill him slowly. You wonder if he accepted it lying down, if he was crying in self-pity and remorse for what he did to you all those years.

Nah. He’s too stupid for that. Too selfish, too.

You close your eyes, slowly inhaling the wine-stenched air, then exhaling a deep sigh. The smell of alcohol reminds you of something else. Something much more recent. 

When you open your still-dreaming eyes again, you’re in a different house. This one you recognize from about two years ago. This time, you’re sitting at a dining room table in a more opulent household, across from the lady who would become your right hand stand user. You can hear the clink of her wine glass against the table as she sets it down for another round of vigorous drinking, while her stand, Cream, holds its head in its hands and makes a noise that was somewhere between a whisper and a scream. Only later did you and Roxy learn that it hated the taste of alcohol, and that it hated when Roxy inebriated herself.

Meeting Roxy was one of the best encounters in your life - you’re not sure what you’d do without her. But back in those days when you first met her, she always made you a little sad. The alcohol Roxy frequently drowned herself in reminded you of your dad.

It reminded you of yourself in your greatest moment of weakness, too.

Silently, the image of Roxy and her stand begin to fade away, like particles of dust being caught in a stir of wind. All that remains of Roxy’s presence is the house and wine she left behind. Unlike you and your father, she and her stand weren’t actually here.

Weren’t actually here…? What do you mean, not actually here…?

This is a dream. You’ve had a lot like it - although usually they’re not this psychologically heavy or revealing. So why would you expect anyone to actually be here? Is your mind still foggy from the fact that you’re...well, inside a dream?

Actually, come to think of it, you’re a lot more aware of your own thoughts in this dream than usual as well. What’s going on?

You stand up from the chair and look around hastily. Something’s really weird about this dream, and you can’t put your finger on what. Everything feels so real - all of your senses seem to be working just as much as they would were you awake. But you can’t be awake, can you? You went to sleep in Roxy’s lap in the pyramid, while that denizen creature searched the stars for some sort of long-dormant evil. You can’t exactly...not still be there, can you? 

Unless of course, this is the work of a Stand User.

You lift your index finger to your chin and start thinking, as the scenery around you shifts to a less familiar location. Fields of snow surround you, and a snow-capped volcano looms in the distance. Behind you, a forest of trees stand markedly green down to the bark, and have a few vibrant red flowers popping out of them in contrast. The sky is an intense blue, a much brighter shade than you’re used to, but much darker than that of any daytime sky on Earth - a cobalt sky, perhaps, would be the best way to describe it. The scenery was beautiful, but you didn’t spend more than a moment thinking about it.

If it was an enemy Stand User who led you here, then it wasn’t one that you knew of. You know the stand abilities of Rose’s band of crusaders, as well as those of your own superpowered army. None of them really had any domain over anything like this, whether it was physical transportation or mental manipulation. Which means that, if this isn’t an ordinary dream, then whoever’s doing this to you is a third party.

You exhale softly into the cold air, your breath visible. You’re glad you can put the possibility of betrayal out of your mind - for now, at least.

????: It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?  


You swiftly turn around. It’s only because you recognize the voice that you don’t immediately rush to her with your vampire swiftness and tear her heart out.

After all, what would be the point when she’s already dead?

JADE: jane???  
JADE: what the heck are you doing here???  
JANE: It’s the darndest thing - I don’t know how I got here either.  
JANE: Or how I’m alive again, if I’m being quite honest.  


You get a closer look at your adoptive sister and eternal rival. Behind her glasses are blank eyes without pupils. They look a little uncanny to you before you remember that you’re a vampire with a Stand, at which point you quickly accept it as “only as strange as everything else going on”. You take off your glasses briefly and look into your reflection.

Your eyes still have their pupils. Still as vividly green and piercing as always. You put your glasses back on.

JADE: im not so sure youre alive right now actually  
JADE: i mean  
JADE: your pupils are gone, after all!!! thats not exactly ordinary living person sorta stuff  
JANE: They are?  
JANE: Huh.  
JADE: besides, you wouldnt exactly be able to stand here even if you were alive  
JADE: since you dont exactly have a body anymore  
JANE: Wait, are you saying that you...succeeded in taking my body as your own?  
JANE: I...failed to stop you?  
JADE: well i wouldnt say you FAILED honestly!!!  
JADE: since i did sit at the bottom of the sea floor for literally a hundred years in a cramped coffin  
JADE: did you not feel any time pass in the afterlife or anything?  
JANE: I’m…  
JANE: Honestly, I’m not sure?  
JADE: what the hell do you mean not sure???  
JANE: To be honest, I’m not even sure that there is an afterlife.  
JANE: The stretch of time between when I died and right now is just...rather fuzzy.  
JANE: It’s as if there’s a gap in my memory that may or may not have been filled with anything in the first place.  
JADE: amazing  


Jane was starting to piss you off a little bit - probably because you started this dream off poorly. You harshly opposed her from a young age. Everything about Jane back then pissed you off too - she wasn’t merely rich while you were poor, she was an heiress. Everything in her life that you had to cheat and take and lie for scraps of were just given to her in excess. 

Pets. Wealth. Power. A father’s love. And she was only given more every day.

Did you overreact when you decided to take all of that for yourself when she was just thirteen, too? Of course you did. You were angry with no clear direction behind it. You probably could’ve done without setting her dog on fire (come on, you love dogs) or forcefully kissing her boyfriend and later husband, Dave. 

But do you regret any of the pain you caused her? Well, no. Not even a little.

That said, you did mean it, one hundred years ago, when you said you respected her more than anyone else. Somewhere along the way she did become a woman of great strength, conviction, and determination. By that point you were more...jealous of the gifts of love and support (and an absurd amount of Hamon passed on to her last minute) she got from others than you were angry about it. Plus, she’s like, super fucking ripped. Like, it’s completely absurd how buff she is. 

Looking at her right now, you’re not sure if you’ve held onto all that respect. You didn’t really have the best company in the 1880’s compared to the current decade.

JANE: Mind telling me what happened with my husband while I was out of it?  
JADE: dave?  
JADE: well he got out of that whole boat mess fine  
JADE: i mean hes dead NOW but its been a hundred years so like  
JADE: i dunno he probably lived out a reasonably good life  
JADE: in fact, he had a child! and a granddaughter! and she had a daughter and a granddaughter of her own!  
JANE: Really now?  
JANE: I’m glad to see that the Crocker-Joestar legacy has lived on without much trouble, then.  
JADE: your great great granddaughter is a pain in my ass jane  
JADE: shes coming all the way to egypt from japan to kill me just because i got her mom sick by waking up  
JADE: i mean how rude can you be???  
JANE: I’m also glad to see that making your life a little bit harder is something that runs in our genes.  
JADE: grrr…  
JANE: How’s my body treating you?  
JANE: I see that you haven’t exactly treated it nearly as well as I have.  
JANE: You’ve certainly...done away with a lot of muscle.  
JADE: okay first of all i still have PLENTY of muscle on these bones  
JADE: but a lot of it withered away after well a hundred fucking years at the bottom of the ocean!!!  
JADE: second of all why would i want to have a body that looked exactly like yours anyway???  
JADE: thatd just be weird  
JANE: But it isn’t really your body, is it now?  
JADE: its been mine longer than its been yours so how about you chew on that?  
JADE: now was there anything else you wanted to say to me??? since apparently this whole dream is just to make me live through memories id rather leave forgotten  
JANE: I see you’re just as biting as always, Jade.  
JADE: im taking that as a no then  
JADE: ugghhhh  


You lay down in the snow out of boredom. You start to wonder if there’s a point to this whole exercise. If it’s a dream, then your brain is running at full capacity and it hates you. And if it’s not, then what the fuck is this Stand user trying to do, if not kill you? Are they really here to just make you talk to dead people?

How fucking dull.

You don’t worry about standing up while Jane walks over to you. If she or anyone else tries something, you could always summon your stand-

Wait.

Hold on a second. Where’s your stand?

You’ve never been able to bring your stand into a dream - you’ve never even tried. So maybe it’s not actually that weird that it isn’t showing up, but...this is a little troubling. 

\-----------------------------------------------------

==> Wait, where's Roxy, anyways?

You are now Roxy Lalonde. Jade’s sleeping in your lap, and the denizen Yaldabaoth towers above you as it tries to, in its words, “find a suitable place to place a portal for the Ultimate Life Form”. Which sounds funny to you for some reason. What would an Ultimate Life Form even look like, anyways? Probably something kinda stupid.

You and Jade won’t have anything to do for hours while this is happening.

What will you do?

==> Ask Yaldabaoth if there’s anything to use as entertainment.

ROXY: hey so  
ROXY: giant snakey guy  
ROXY: mister reptile dude  
ROXY: yaldy baldy  
ROXY: big y   
ROXY: sunny serpent d  
ROXY: hello?  
YALDABAOTH: WHAT BUSINESS DO YOU HAVE WITH ME?  
YALDABAOTH: SEARCHING DEEP SPACE FOR THE ULTIMATE LIFE FORM TAKES TIME AND CONCENTRATION.   
YALDABAOTH: SO THIS BETTER NOT BE A POINTLESS IMPOSITION.  
ROXY: ok so 1st of all  
ROXY: do u have any movies  
YALDABAOTH: WHAT USE WOULD A DENIZEN SUCH AS I HAVE FOR HUMAN ENTERTAINMENT?  
YALDABAOTH: I AM HERE TO PROVIDE YOUR COMPANION WITH A CHOICE, AND TEST THEM DEPENDING ON WHAT THEY CHOOSE.  
YALDABAOTH: NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.  
ROXY: sheesh u couldve just said no w/o rubbing ur immortality in my small ass human face  
YALDABAOTH: WELL.  
YALDABAOTH: I DO HAVE A COPY OF THE BREAKFAST CLUB AND A TELEVISION BEHIND ME.  
ROXY: oh fuck yes  


You have a big smile on your face. You didn’t really expect anything out of this whole interaction. You started to wonder why Yaldabaoth had a TV and a few movies to watch in the first place - especially something so recent. Do denizens just get bored too? Did someone bring these movies to him for his consumption? 

A strange, indescribable but familiar noise sounds off to your right, completely distracting your train of thought. You look over towards the noise and your eyes widen in shock. 

Jade Harley still slept on your lap. But next to her sleeping feet stood her Stand. You’ve only seen it out a few times. But never when she wasn’t fighting, and absolutely never when she was asleep. But despite the impossibilities, there it stood. 

The World.

You clench your hand a little bit, reflexively. You’re not sure exactly what’s happening right now. Chances are, Jade doesn’t either. Her stand, shining a dirty gold in the pyramid darkness, is standing in upright position, its arms to the side and its feet floating millimeters off the ground. It doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all - simply primed to act.

Suddenly, The World lies down onto the ground, as if it were resting on a grassy plain to look at a blue, cloudy sky, or a snowy hill to look at a vivid blue night. Its expression took on a more cautious, anxious look, with no hint of its usual stoic, vaguely angered eyes staring into the distance. Cautiously, you summon your own stand, Cream, to look at The World with his eyes without getting up and disturbing Jade.

The World’s expression was the same expression Jade had when she was cautiously pensive about whatever situation she was in. Her eyes would usually squint and her usual smile would turn to a moving frown, that often opened and closed reflexively. She hasn't been cautiously pensive about any situations that didn't seem downright skeptical. You decide to keep your guard up, in case Yaldabaoth or someone else is trying to pull something on you.

You had a bad feeling about this.


	3. Chapter 3

A gentle breeze flows through the moonlit streets of Cairo, instilling a quiet chill in the crowds that walk by. It was the kind of breeze you'd associate with the innocence of youth, the kind of breeze you'd feel while playing tag in an open field with your friends as a child. The sort of breeze that blows by and reminds you that everything is right in the world. 

The sort of breeze that lies - one that maintains a falsehood. 

Your name is Davesprite, and you guard the gate of Jade Harley's evil lair and mansion in Cairo. The last vestiges of the wind reach and tickle your feathers for the briefest of moments before the air around you stagnates. You gaze ahead from your perch atop the gate, your eyes masked behind an orange pair of sunglasses. 

A strange man walks towards you with his own impressive wingspan protruding outside of his rapidly flashing green overcoat, his pointed hair sticking in all sorts of directions as if gravity didn't matter. His face is angular - so much so that you could imagine it being made out of triangles - with red circles seemingly painted onto his cheeks. His appearance was completed with a golden cane in his hand, connecting his resting hand to the ground as if it were an extra limb.

Basically, he was anime as fuck.

As the gatekeeper of the mansion, you are tasked with killing anyone who dares trespass, even while Jade's away. You were expecting this man. You crave information quite badly these days, as if it felt against the laws of nature for you not to know about everything that’s going on. And this man - one of Jade’s most trusted allies, the person she met first after coming back from the depths of the ocean, is a source of info that you practically salivate at.

Your name is Davesprite, and you hunger.

DAVESPRITE: did you get the mcnuggets for me like i asked  
LORD: I haven’t no.  
DAVESPRITE: then why are you wasting my god damn time

First name? Lord. Last name? English.

Kinda struck you as weird, considering that Lord doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as anything but a title, but you suppose you’ve heard weirder.

Aranea sits at a gambling table outside the gate with you, on your side. She’s shuffling a deck of poker cards when she hears you speak, to which she immediately perks up and pays attention. You hadn’t exactly been very talkative for the past day, not after that horribly embarrassing rant you had with her earlier. You’ve largely been giving her the silent treatment ever since - just so she wouldn’t tease you so mercilessly. You were hoping that she’d eventually just forget about it.

Maybe she has forgotten about it. It certainly seemed like she was much more focused on the guest in front of you.

ARANEA: I see you’ve found your way 8ack here, English.  
ARANEA: 8ut if you were looking for Jade, I’m afraid that you’ve missed her.  
ARANEA: She headed over to the pyramids earlier today with Roxy.  
LORD: I see.  
LORD: I sUppose I don’t have any more bUsiness here, then-  
ARANEA: 8efore you go, however, I’d like to ask you a few questions.  
LORD: What kinds of questions might yoU have for me?  
ARANEA: Important ones.  
ARANEA: And perhaps, after that, some less important ones.  
ARANEA: Interested in providing me with a little 8it of exposition on your end?   
ARANEA: Of course, I’m always more than willing to match your leaking of information with a few leaks of my own.  
LORD: Really now?  
LORD: I was Under the assUmption that Jade’s camaraderie of stand Users was too tight a ship to have any leaks.  
LORD: Are yoU implying what I believe yoU may be implying?  
ARANEA: Perhaps. Perhaps not.  
ARANEA: What sorts of implications do you think I’m making here?  
LORD: Is that yoUr first qUestion?  
ARANEA: I don’t know! You tell me.  
LORD: I see yoU think of yoUrself very highly. A definite similarity between the two of Us.  
ARANEA: The main difference 8eing that one of us is actually correct in our self-assessment.  
LORD: And which one of Us is that?  
ARANEA: You’ve certainly 8een asking me many more questions than I’ve 8een asking you.   
ARANEA: I know that you’re far more curious than you appear. Surely I know something that you don’t that piques your interest.  
LORD: And here I was, thinking that yoU were the one who wanted to get her dainty card-playing hands on some knowledge.  
LORD: I coUld leave right now, you know. And yoU would forever be in the dark.   
ARANEA: And yet you haven’t. Why is that?  
LORD: Another question?  
ARANEA: Is it?  
DAVESPRITE: oh my fucking god im really just going to be sitting here for an hour of duelling expository bullshit arent i please get ON with this   
ARANEA: ...  
LORD: …

You’re starting to get a little hangry. You begin to realize how much you really wanted those fucking McNuggets.

ARANEA: Ahem.  
ARANEA: Perhaps our conversation is getting out of hand.  
ARANEA: We should settle this with something a little more…  
ARANEA: Decisive.  
LORD: And what exactly do yoU mean by that?  
ARANEA: I think we should go ahead and play a game.  
LORD: A game, yoU say?  
LORD: Interesting...perhaps I woUld like to play a game. What type of game shall we be playing?  
ARANEA: I’ll wager some very interesting tidbits about the creation of our universe that I’ve slowly been coming into contact with…  
ARANEA: And you can bet something of equal value.  
ARANEA: Such as some information about Jade’s plans.  
ARANEA: Or, if you’re not comfortable putting that up as a bet you could always wager...your soul.  
LORD: ... 

There it is. Aranea ALWAYS asks people to ante up their soul for one reason or another. It’s practically an obligation for her at this point. Her stand, Osiris, materializes behind her. You always thought it looked kind of weird, with its strange, big pouty lips and suction cup fingers. Then again, you can’t really say your stand looks much better, since it’s a multi-armed bird skeleton looking motherfucker. 

A hand juts out into existence and grabs Aranea’s horn and tilts her head back a little, forcing her to look up at the source. It’s Lord’s stand - Whitesnake, a humanoid figure with what looks like a cross between a ski mask and a black crown on his head. It grimaces at your spidery gambler friend(?), while its user glares at her, as if to intimidate her very soul. You could swear that the red coloration of his eyes was practically glowing with superiority. Whitesnake brings its other hand closer to Aranea’s face and caresses it, making her shiver in fear, and traces its finger up to her forehead. What seems like a DVD slot appears on said forehead.

LORD: I don’t think yoU realize jUst who yoU’re dealing with.  
LORD: YoU are not in a position where yoU can retain any semblance of control over me.  
LORD: I am the master who presides over yoU. I am yoUr LORD.  
LORD: And yoU’re jUst another one of the bitches at my feet.  
LORD: I am not here to play yoUr games. YoU are here to play MINE.  
LORD: So don’t think that yoU can simply toy with me like all the other soUls you take as trophies.  
LORD: Or yoU’ll regret ever having considered fUcking with me.  
LORD: Are we clear?  
ARANEA: I-  
LORD: ARE WE CLEAR.  
ARANEA: U-understood.

You really wish you had some popcorn for this moment. Or any food, honestly, like the McNuggets you were promised. You’ve largely been looking forward to someone putting Aranea in her place, but this was just sort of...unsettling. Is this the kind of person who Jade spends her time with?

No, that doesn’t...seem right. Maybe there’s a reason why he’s been showing up less and less. He seems way more unbearable to talk to than anyone else she finds herself hanging out with. Maybe she realized that after meeting a few people who weren’t completely subservient yes men, total fucking lunatics, or super rich assholes.

Then again, you’re thinking on an empty stomach. Who knows how many of these Jade takes actually make any sense?

Whitesnake dissipates into thin air and the slot on Aranea’s head disappears, and she exhales a deep breath. She’s making slight gasps for air after the tense situation she just got out of. Lord meanwhile, has already turned the other way, and starts staring off into the distance.

LORD: In any case.  
LORD: I think it’s clear that yoU do not deserve any information I might have for yoU if yoU’re so willing to resort to trickery.  
LORD: How strong could yoUr loyalty possibly be to Jade if yoU are really resorting to sUch dUplicity for her secrets?  
ARANEA: …  
LORD: And I doUbt yoU know anything that I don’t already.  
LORD: So let’s leave it at that. I’ll be off to find Jade at the pyramids, then.  
LORD: I see there’s nothing of worth here.   
LORD: We’ll probably never meet again.  
LORD: So I’d like to leave yoU with one last farewell.  
DAVESPRITE: wait  
DAVESPRITE: what about my mcnuggets  
LORD: What *aboUt* your McNuggets?

Okay, that is IT.

In an instant, you use your stand, Horus, to conjure up a large icicle spear that pierces through the heart of the green bastard. Blood spurts out of his chest in front of him as he begins to feel a surge of pain throughout his body. 

An instant later, you retract the ice. Lord struggles to stand up for a moment before keeling over like a ragdoll. And just like that, he lies dead in a pool of his own blood on the pavement of the Cairo street.

ARANEA: I…  
DAVESPRITE: serves that asshole right  
DAVESPRITE: “what about your mcnuggets” my ass   
ARANEA: Davesprite…  
ARANEA: What...what the...  
ARANEA: WHAT THE F8CK DID YOU JUST DO!?!?!?!?  
DAVESPRITE: aranea i am FUCKING STARVING  
DAVESPRITE: and shitwing dickmunch here didnt even bring me back any mcnuggies and smeared his bland ass all over our three way  
DAVESPRITE: conversation  
DAVESPRITE: three way CONVERSATION  
DAVESPRITE: so i was just getting a little frustrated and   
DAVESPRITE: you two were being so vague and i just lost it???  
DAVESPRITE: he shouldve just brought me back some mcdonalds!!!  
ARANEA: THERE AREN’T ANY MCDONALD’S RESTAURANTS IN EGYPT YOU 8RAINDEAD ASSHOLE!!!!!!!!  
DAVESPRITE: oh  
DAVESPRITE: well fuck i guess that was a pretty hefty fuckin overreaction then huh my bad  
ARANEA: Oh god...oh god…  
ARANEA: Davesprite, do you have ANY idea what the f8ck you just did!?  
ARANEA: You practically committed TREASON against JADE HARLEY of all people! Are you 8atshit insane!?!?!?!?  
DAVESPRITE: i am  
DAVESPRITE: very hungry right now you have no fucking idea  
ARANEA: 8ut...8ut now Jade’s going to come 8ack and look at all this and know that I was ALSO here and could’ve stopped you!  
ARANEA: So now I’m an ACCOMPLICE in your 8IRD8RAINED, IMPULSE-LED TREACHERY!!!!!!!!  
ARANEA: Are you HAPPY living like the stupidest fuckup in the universe? ARE YOU!? AUGHHHHH!!!!!!!!  
DAVESPRITE: holy shit you NEED to chill out  
DAVESPRITE: maybe we should just calm down and eat something  
DAVESPRITE: do you know any good restaurants in cairo since apparently mcdonalds doesnt exist here  
DAVESPRITE: taco bell maybe  
DAVESPRITE: maybe pizza hut  
DAVESPRITE: possibly a place that is a combination of the two somehow  
ARANEA: Ffffffff........we have to hide the 8ody.   
ARANEA: NOW.  
DAVESPRITE: fine geez

You pick the corpse up by the legs while Aranea grabs his shoulders, and-

LATULA: h3y guys! 4ny of you down to pl4y som3 m4r1o k4rt?

FUCK. You almost drop Lord’s cadaver in shock. You turn and look back towards Latula, who’s standing at the gate. Damn, you really got caught already, huh?

LATULA: on s3cond thought, 1t looks l1k3 you two 4r3 k1nd4 busy.  
LATULA: wh4t 4r3 you guys do1ng?  
ARANEA: Oh, th-this? We’re just...trying to do a live performance of Weekend at 8ernie’s.  
LATULA: r34lly?  
DAVESPRITE: oh no were just carrying out lord's dead body and hiding it before jade can find out i committed a mild form of organizational treason because i wanted mcdonalds nuggets  
ARANEA: Davesprite, what the fuck. Why would you tell her that. Are you fucking stupid? I hate you.  
LATULA: oh n34t! do you guys n33d 4 h4nd?  
ARANEA: I, ah, uh.  
ARANEA: You’re not…reacting very much to this.  
DAVESPRITE: sure help us out

Well, she responded to that way better than expected. Then again, maybe you were expecting too much of a righteous response from someone whose battle tactic is to literally play video games with the opponent. Latula walks on over and helps grab the legs on your side, as you all awkwardly sidestep aimlessly in search of a ditch to bury this man.

LATULA: hold on 4 s3cond, why d1d you w4nt ch1ck3n mcnugg3ts 4nyw4ys?  
DAVESPRITE: what do you mean  
ARANEA: Less talking, more dragging, people!!!!!!!!  
LATULA: 1 m34n, you'r3 4 b1rd 4nd 3v3ryth1ng 4r3n't you?   
LATULA: why would you 34t ch1ck3n 1f you'r3 p4rt b1rd?  
ARANEA: Hhhhgghhhh...  
DAVESPRITE: you know that is a good question  
ARANEA: Nnnnngghh! Stop! Talking!  
DAVESPRITE: what the fuck are you so worked up about  
LATULA: don't worry, 1 th1nk sh3's just c4ught b3tw33n h3r worry 4bout th3 s1tu4t1on 4nd h3r p4tholog1c4l n33d to 3xpl41n sh1t to p3opl3!  
ARANEA: Okay! Fine!!!!!!!!  
ARANEA: Did you KNOW that there are 8irds that eat other 8irds? In fact, it's extraordinarily common for them to do so!  
ARANEA: There are all kinds of 8irds of prey, such as owls, hawks, and falcons that all eat other avian creatures!  
ARANEA: This even extends to the less dangerous kinds of 8irds!  
ARANEA: Davesprite, for instance, is a sprite that's made partly of a crow, which is a kind of 8ird that would eat nestling 8irds!  
LATULA: wo4h, crows do th4t?  
ARANEA: Furthermore, crows aren't at all picky concerning the type of food they get, which likely explains why Davesprite has a higher affinity for fast food than most of us-  
DAVESPRITE: please stop  
ARANEA: I can't! You did this to me!!!!!!!!  
ARANEA: Another thing a8out crows is that…  


We’ll stop this here before you die from listening to Aranea ramble about crows and other birds for an hour while she, Davesprite, and Latula try to find the best place nearby to bury a dead body. 

You’re welcome.


	4. Chapter 4

==> Terezi: Finish murdering the people in the police department building.

What are you talking about? None of them were alive in the first place.

It’s been maybe an hour or two since you went through that whole episode. You were TRYING to start up a long, drawn out puppet performance in which you would have to make a court defense for the moody teenage boys who got arrested for loitering around in the dark. It would’ve been an intense courtroom session full of twists, turns, and witness testimonies, sure to open up each person’s deepest darkest secrets in ways each more epic than the last. Every corpse you had in wait would be the key players, the judge, the jury - it was going to kick ass.

But apparently, according to one of your scouts, Rose and her crew are making their way over here. So you had to nip the session in the bud a little bit. And besides - Arcjec and Lars, was it? Those two were just. SO god damn boring. You know that you chose them as the defendants because they seemed like they were closed off when they were alive and could’ve used some moments of vulnerability in the little story you wanted to build, but wow. You stopped caring about them pretty much instantly.

You’ll have to admit. Killing people who are already dead did wonders for your stress.

There’s that phrase again. Weren’t alive. Already dead. You never made much of an explanation to the narrative on how that all works! After all, people generally...don’t get up and act like nothing happened when they died, do they? And it’s not like Jade revived these people as vampires - no, no, no. This bunch? They’re all YOUR toys.

See, your stand, “Justice”, has the peculiar ability to control bodies through any open wounds they might have. If said body has a wound, they’re turned into a small, vacuous hole on their body, where nothing goes in or out but the red fog of your stand. With just a thought, you can make them do practically anything they’d do when they were alive. And you can do this with just about anything - animals, people, plants, even some inanimate objects. Usually, a living person or animal can resist your control to a slight extent, but corpses? They can’t do a damn thing.

But with humans, trolls, and other creatures with similar levels of cognition, you can concentrate reeeeeally hard, and an almost green, teal-ish aura radiates off of you. When you do this, Justice seems to have the ability to bring back the *minds* of those who lost them. You’re not sure exactly how it works, but this is why you can essentially bring people back from the dead as zombies.

You’ve largely used them for courtroom dramas, with varying degrees of violence. Most of them are resistant upon first revival...but they all come around.

(By the way, if it wasn’t obvious? That dragon you rode here a while back is also dead. It was too bad, really! She’d been dead for a few days when you found her. She’s probably thrashing around about a mile away.)

Anyways! The boys are probably busy putting their bodies back together, so you’re here, in a dark, abandoned courtroom. There’s one last dead soul you’ve been waiting to wake up. 

You sit on the judge’s desk, staring down at the witness stand bathed in moonlight. A once-living troll stands there, dressed in what seems to be a teal military vest of sorts underneath a red coat. Strapped to her waist are a handgun and a cutlass - clearly, she was trained and ready for any altercation. Keyword: was.

A single red, rectangular lens covered up her right eye. It’s cracked, and a vertical scar marks her eyelid. Her body lays limp against the stand, waiting to be given new life.

Briefly, you turn your head towards the small folder of confidential information to your left, and take a short whiff. Then you summon your stand, Justice. It takes the form of a massive, gaseous floating skull with detached claws behind you, as it pours red mist into the courtroom around you. You start to concentrate on the corpse in front of you. All the thoughts, impulses, emotions, behaviors she had as a living person begin to surround her in a teal light, all as she takes in the red fog through her scarred eye.

It takes a few minutes. But eventually, the mist disappears, your concentration wanes, and her body un-slumps.

Her arm moves instinctively to provide herself with balance against the railing, and she pulls herself up to an upright position. Slowly, her eyes crack open. She raises her hand to her right eye - there’s a scar there, but she doesn’t feel any sort of pain. As soon as she removes her hand from her face, she surveys the situation, and sees you, grinning.

Immediately, she pulls out her revolver and points it at you.

TEREZI: H3H3H3H3H3H3H3!!! YOU SUR3 4R3 QU1CK ON TH3 DR4W 4R3N’T YOU M1SS 1OP4R4?  
SECILY: Tell me who you are and why we’re here.  
SECILY: Or things might just get a little violent. Kidnapping isn’t exactly something Corporate or I look over very lightly.  
SECILY: And I doubt you took me here through more legal means.

Wow, she just cuts right to the point, doesn’t she? You couldn’t help but giggle a little bit at that. Not very many of the people you’ve awakened were so quick to action. 

Last time you did this, it was a three-eyed weirdo who was absolutely astonished at the idea that you could bring people back to life with their minds fully intact. He just would NOT stop badgering you about the “mechanism” by which you performed the revival or whatever. You had no clue what he was talking about! And much less patience for him as he started to go on and on about his life story researching zombies or whatever. It’s not like you have a manual on WHY Justice works the way it does. It’s basically magic, okay?

TEREZI: MY N4M3 1S T3R3Z1, 4ND 4S FOR TH3 “WHY”...  
TEREZI: W3LL, 1T’S 4 B1T OF 4 LONG STORY  
SECILY: I’m not going anywhere. I doubt you have any intention of letting me.  
TEREZI: W3’V3 GOT 4 SM4RT L4DY 1N COURT TONIGHT!  
TEREZI: 1N 4LL S3R1OUSN3SS, 4LL W1LL B3 R3V34L3D 1N DU3 T1M3  
SECILY: I don’t think you understand just how infuriating it is to be taken to somewhere that’s so abandoned that it has cobwebs growing in the corner…  
SECILY: And be figuratively and literally kept in the dark about the situation.  
SECILY: I’m not unravelling a mystery here. I have absolutely no clue what is happening, and you’re refusing to open up because of what, exactly? Are you doing this for the drama of the moment? Or are you just withholding information for no reason?  
TEREZI: SORRY TO G3T OFF TOPIC BUT 1 H4V3 TO S4Y  
TEREZI: YOUR 3NS3MBL3 SM3LLS 4M4Z1NG  
TEREZI: 1T'S SUCH 4 GOOD M1X OF D3C4D3NT CR1MSON HU3S 4ND W4SH3D OUT T34L...  
TEREZI: 4ND THE W4Y YOUR CO4T FL4R3S OUT B3H1ND YOU 1S PR3TTY CHO1C3 TOO  
SECILY: I smell like the decaying flesh of a day old corpse.   
SECILY: I don't see how you could think my scent is at all pleasant, unless your nose has an affinity towards the grotesque.  
TEREZI: OH NO S33 1 H4V3 TH1S TH1NG  
TEREZI: WH3R3 1'M L1K3  
TEREZI: 1 C4N 3SS3NT14LLY SM3LL YOU 4ND “S33” ALL YOUR COLORS TH4T W4Y   
TEREZI: 3XC3PT 1N 4 W4Y TH4T 1SN’T 4CTU4L S1GHT, S1NCE 1'M BL1ND  
TEREZI: TH1NK ECHOLOC4T1ON  
TEREZI: BUT W4Y S3X13R  
SECILY: Do teenagers like you think echolocation is sexy? I have to admit, I'm very confused at what constitutes the standard of beauty in this day and age.  
TEREZI: 1'M 10 SW33PS OLD TH4NK YOU V3RY MUCH  
SECILY: I'm starting to tire of this vacuous banter.  
SECILY: Tell me what's going on and why I smell like a cadaver before I make this interrogation more of a physical endeavor for us both.  
TEREZI: W3LL TH4T'S 34SY  
TEREZI: S33, YOU'RE K1ND OF...  
TEREZI: 4LR34DY D34D!

Secily takes in a breath and blinks for a little bit more than a second. Then she sighs, still pointing the gun in your direction. You’re pretty sure she’d look down with a mix of mild dejection and relief, if she still had pupils - but her eyes are as white as your teeth. That’s how it is for anyone you bring back, after all.

(The only exceptions to this rule are those two teens you were thinking about earlier. You drew pupils onto their eyes for immersion’s sake.)

((What? Don’t look at me - this CLEARLY isn’t me covering up any inconsistencies. Come on now, do you honestly think I’m just writing all this by the seat of my pants? Who even does that kind of thing?))

Ahem. While you were distracted, drawing further and further into needlessly meta thoughts about what you’ve been doing for the past day, Secily has retreated over to a bench and plugged in a water boiler. You’re not sure where she even got that thing.

TEREZI: W41T HOLD ON  
TEREZI: YOU D1DN’T 3V3N 4SK M3 1F 1 W4S T3LL1NG TH3 TRUTH  
SECILY: Well, at first, I was pretty sure you were lying. It wouldn’t have been hard to fake the smell if you had access to something sufficiently foul-stenched to rub on me.  
SECILY: Given the corpse resting in the corner, you definitely had the requisite “something”.  
TEREZI: (WHOOPS)  
SECILY: And judging by the reflection on my device, I don’t seem to have any pupils anymore. Which is strange, but again, it wouldn’t have been impossible to insert a contact lens in my sleep that made my eyes go white like this.  
TEREZI: YOU’R3 V3RY...OBS3RV4NT  
SECILY: It’s part of the job.  
TEREZI: SO WH4T L3D YOU TO TH3 CONCLUS1ON TH4T 1 W4SN’T M3SS1NG W1TH YOU?  
SECILY: It took me a moment, but I remembered.  
SECILY: I remembered surveying the ruins of a high school thousands of miles from home, remembered being dazzled by the unpolluted sky full of stars and lights.   
SECILY: I remembered the shadowy figure standing on the scorched structure above me - the pain searing in my eye and my body as I started bleeding for no discernible reason.  
SECILY: I remembered my death. And the man who caused it.  
TERERZI: 1...S33

Your kismesis sucked.

SECILY: So I’m making myself something to drink while I make sense of all this.  
SECILY: It's not every day you wake up and come to the realization that you've been turned into a puppet, merely to be used for someone else's entertainment.  
SECILY: Well. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, actually. I spent a lot of time waking up to similar sentiments.  
TEREZI: 1 S33 YOU’V3 4NT1C1P4T3D WHY 1 WOK3 YOU UP 1N TH3 F1RST PL4C3  
SECILY: You’re not the first one who’s tried to take hold of me for my skills and experience.  
SECILY: You are, however, the first to succeed.  
TEREZI: TH4T’S GR34T 4ND 4LL, BUT...  
TEREZI: WHY 4R3 YOU BO1L1NG P3PS1  
SECILY: I…

Secily looks at you. This wasn’t exactly a facet of Repitonian culture you were aware of.

SECILY: Is that unusual to you?  
TEREZI: NO 1'M JUST WOND3R1NG WHY 1 N3V3R C4M3 UP W1TH TH4T  
TEREZI: 1T SOUNDS L1K3 SOM3TH1NG 1'D DR1NK  
TEREZI: PROB4BLY T4ST3S W4Y B3TT3R TH4N TH3 BL4ND 4SS COLORL3SS W4T3R B4CK 4T TH3 M4NS1ON  
SECILY: What's...water?  
TEREZI: TH4T M1GHT B3 TH3 S4DD3ST TH1NG 1'V3 3V3R H34RD G3T UTT3RED

Secily shrugs and pours the boiled soft drink into a mug, before sipping it. She sighs again.

SECILY: So I'm dead. - really dead, and there's nothing I can really do or say that'll change that.  
SECILY: And yet...here I am. Standing. Breathing. Speaking to another person who's about to tell me why she's my boss now.  
SECILY: It's strangely comforting, knowing that you gave me a second chance - knowing that others can get a second chance just like I did.  
SECILY: If I knew there was someone out there who could do this, I might've...  
SECILY: ...  
SECILY: Anyways.  
SECILY: As comforting as it is, there's something uncomfortable about it all.  
SECILY: It feels like already, I'm falling back into the routine I had while I was alive.  
SECILY: Am I going to spend my undead days the same way I spent the days I had alive?  
SECILY: Working myself to exhaustion with no end in sight? I suppose that's the sort of afterlife that suits me.  
TEREZI: OH GOD NO, TH4T'S UH  
TEREZI: WOW

Okay, wow, fuck. You knew that bringing people back to life could be a little intense for people sometimes, but damn. That was heavy.

TEREZI: Y33333SH...   
TEREZI: Y34H, TH4T'S NOT FUCK1NG H4PP3N1NG  
SECILY: Hmm?  
TEREZI: 1 N33D YOU FOR 3X4CTLY ON3 TH1NG  
TEREZI: 4ND 4FT3R TH4T CONS1D3R YOUR "CONTR4CT" TO M3 NULL 4ND VO1D  
SECILY: I was kind of hoping that I could’ve given up my duties by now.  
SECILY: After all, Death took my piece off the board, and my role in this game finally came to an end.  
TEREZI: JUST B3C4US3 YOU’R3 D34D DO3SN'T M34N YOU'R3 DON3 FOR, UNFORTUN4T3LY  
TEREZI: 1'V3 P1CK3D UP TH3S3 M3T4PHOR1C4L CH3SS P13C3S 4ND PUT TH3M ON 4 N3W BO4RD, 4 N3W G4M3 - ON3 MUCH SHORT3R 1N DUR4T1ON  
TEREZI: 4ND WHO KNOWS! M4YB3 YOU'LL G3T SOM3TH1NG OUT OF 1T FOR YOUR CO-OP3R4T1ON  
TEREZI: WH1CH 1 KNOW YOU'R3 NOT 3X4CTLY US3D TO  
SECILY: What exactly do you mean by that?  
TEREZI: 1 C4N BR1NG H3R B4CK, YOU KNOW  
SECILY: Who are you...  
SECILY: Oh.

Her. 

If you’re being honest with yourself, you aren’t exactly sure who “her” is. Besides being Secily’s dead matesprit, you mean. You don’t even know her name! 

It’s not like you have much information on Secily herself in the first place. You’ve licked through a couple of files, sure, but it’s not like you’ve watched important segments of her life play out in the form of an interactable novel with moving pictures here and there. Or smelled any of that hypothetical story and its visuals.

Nonetheless, you know *enough*, and this should grab her attention. You can worry about the details later.

SECILY: ...I don't believe you. Stop toying with me right now.  
SECILY: Or I'll make you regret the day you were brought into this world.  
TEREZI: HON3STLY 1'D LOV3 TO S33 YOU TRY!!!  
TEREZI: BUT TH4NKS TO MY ST4ND, JUST1C3, YOU WOULDN'T B3 4BL3 TO K1LL M3 3V3N 1F YOU W4NT3D TO  
TEREZI: WH1CH 1 KNOW YOU DON'T  
TEREZI: B3C4US3 ON SOM3 L3V3L YOU KNOW 1'M NOT F33D1NG YOU L13S  
TEREZI: B3C4US3 SOM3WH3R3 D33P 1NS1D3 YOU C4N T3LL TH4T 1 R34LLY, R34LLY DO W4NT TH3 B3ST FOR YOU 4ND 3V3RYON3 1N TH1S UNF41R, M1SM4SH3D WORLD  
TEREZI: OR 4T L34ST, TH4T 1 W4NT TO H3LP SOM3ON3 WHO DO3S  
TEREZI: SO WH4T DO YOU S4Y? 4R3 YOU 1N TO H3LP M3 W1TH TH3 ON3 TH1NG 1 N33D YOU TO DO?  
SECILY: ...........  
SECILY: 1.e4 Tell me how you brought me back. ...e5

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Repiton, California. To most, it's an isolationist city shrouded in mystery, cloaked in intrigue. On every map, all roads leading to the city were taken off, and its existence has practically been removed from the history books. Ever since a massive amount of toxic waste spilled out into the bay the city grew next to, the United States government covered up all signs of misconduct by covering up Repiton itself. Soon, it was forgotten by almost everyone - and anyone who did remember usually took a trip there and never came back.

To you, this place is...less than unknown, to say the least. Two years ago, you, Jade, and Roxy all took a trip there based on information Aranea gave away in a quick game of poker. You're not really sure how she came to know about it.

You offered to drive. Jade told you that might not be a good idea, considering the state of your eyes. You said you had no idea what she was talking about.

Repiton, in your short visit there, seemed like a capitalist hellscape on overdrive. Technology was far more advanced in that city, but what seemed to result was an endless plain of advertisements and useless commodities being plastered all over. There was a weird fucking energy to the place. You're pretty sure most of the populous were slowly working themselves to death, too. It didn’t take long for Jade to realize that maybe this wasn’t the best place to learn about the state of the world a hundred years after being locked in a coffin. So you didn’t spend that much time there.

At least the color palette was nice. The smell of the place was a delectable mix of bright neon colors that were quite stimulating, to say the least.

What you remember most about your week in Repiton was...well, leaving, honestly, using Jade's stand power. Leaving and deciding that you and Jade should have a raw steak eating contest in a closed restaurant kitchen to celebrate. 

She won that, by the way. You smile softly at the thought.

But why is this all important now?

One year ago, Repiton broke its extremely isolationist tenants and sent out a number of high schoolers abroad for a foreign exchange program at a school about a hundred miles from here. It was supposed to just be a short field trip, where the students could meet other people and learn about the culture. You’d guess that it probably started out that way. 

But the fun little field trip ended, and the students were bathed in flames. There was only one survivor, and thanks to one Rose Lalonde, he’s tired and bloody with a broken car in the middle of the desert.

You know who was responsible. It was Vriska, and probably also J. Geil.

Admittedly, you don’t really HAVE the evidence to really prove either of them as the guilty party, but given that J. Geil told you himself that he was just showing Vriska a way to free herself, a way to unshackle herself from the whims of her once-living lusus that he ended up killing for her, well...you’re not entirely sure you really NEED much more evidence than that.

You remember the night like it was yesterday. Moonlight shone down and lit up the ruined concrete. A soft breeze wafted through the air of the demolished, charred school grounds, as if Earth itself was trying to comfort those lost in the tragedy. You were there because you thought that, maybe if you could use your stand, you could at least preserve the memory and the bodies of the students who died, in your own fucked up way. 

You weren’t alone. J. Geil was waiting for you on the top of a jagged, still-standing pillar, waiting to taunt you and play mindgames with you, in the strange, aggressive manner he co-opted after you visited Paris with him that one time. This was after he went crazy, needless to say. All he seemed to want to do was make you in particular feel horrible, and you never really figured out why that was. Was he lashing out against you in retaliation of poor treatment? Was he just returning your teasing in an over-the-top, brutal manner? Was he trying to express his dissatisfaction with himself and the world in possibly the stupidest, least healthy way possible? It’s a little hard for you to tell where the problems stemmed from the inside.

He told you that Vriska was the reason this school burned down. You remember thinking that there was absolutely no way she’d do this of her own free will. You’re not really sure you can believe that with absolute certainty anymore. And now she’s dead - you can’t exactly ask her yourself.

God, sending her on that plane to the Joestar gang was just one of many of your huge mistakes. 

Sorry, you were trying to recount why Repiton was important in all of this, right? You’re getting WAY off track.

Upon hearing that a few dozen Repitonian students died abroad, the Corporation sent their best and brightest in order to figure out what the hell was going on. The FBI sent a ragtag duo for similar reasons - the bumbling type, because it wasn’t so high on their priorities, most likely. 

That’s why you and J. Geil found yourselves surrounded by Secily, Kate and Gary.

And that’s why they quickly found themselves without a life.

J. Geil’s stand, Hanged Man, hopped over to the reflection in your sunglasses and slaughtered them without them ever knowing what killed them. It’s not like they could see stands, after all - they’re not stand users.

Before you got the chance to kick his ass for murdering a bunch of innocent people, J. Geil left the scene as swiftly as he came. He left only with a single message left to you - to consider this a free addition to your parade of puppets.

God damn did you hate that guy. You should’ve killed him a long time ago, when you had the chance, then he wouldn’t have ruined the lives of so many people and warped someone like Vriska beyond recognition.

But you weren’t going to just leave those corpses there, to rot from an unfair death. They were taken long before their time - why should they have such an unceremonious, unhappy ending? They should at least live long enough to grow the same hole in their hearts as you have.

(For the record, Kate and Gary are from an old fanventure - you mean, town, called Nightfall. Not to be confused with any other Kates or Garys, living or otherwise!)

Ugh. You are just on a fucking ROLL with this introspection shit, aren’t you? You really need to stop thinking about this shit, or you’ll either get so stressed you need to relieve it with a couple well-placed corpse-stabs, or so emotionally exhausted that you can’t do anything. And you’re not going to want to be going through either of those when Rose gets here.

You decide to go ahead and focus more on the topic at hand. After you get done explaining things to Secily (who’s taking this in remarkable stride), she takes a sip from her mug of boiled soda.

SECILY: 1.e3 So that’s the situation. ...d5  
SECILY: 2.c4 Slay the intruders with a sneak attack, while you’re busy deceiving them. ...e6  
SECILY: 3.f3 It seems you know how to put my training to good use, at least. So much of my job involves waiting for leads. ...c5  
SECILY: 4.b3 And you’re sure that, whoever we kill, we can bring back to life later? ...d4  
TEREZI: OF COURS3!  
TEREZI: TH4T 1S, W3’LL PROB4BLY W41T 4T L34ST 4 L1TTL3 WH1L3 FOR J4D3 TO 4CH13V3 H3R GO4LS  
TEREZI: B3FOR3 BR1NG1NG TH3M B4CK TO L1F3 WH3N TH3Y C4N’T STOP H3R  
SECILY: 5.b2 I see. ...c6  
SECILY: 6.d3 Alright. I’m in. ...e5  
TEREZI: WOW R34LLY?  
TEREZI: YOU KNOW, 1 W4S 4CTU4LLY 3XP3CT1NG 4 LOT MOR3 PUSHB4CK FROM SOM3ON3 4S COMB4T-R34DY 4S YOU  
TEREZI: WH4T M4K3S YOU SO QU1CK TO 4CC3PT?  
SECILY: 7.a3 … ...f5  
SECILY: 8.c2 Do we really need to talk about this? What’s important is that I do my job. ...f6  
SECILY: 9.d1 And more importantly, that you uphold your end of the bargain. ...e4  
TEREZI: 1 GU3SS TH4T M4K3S S3NS3 Y34H  
TEREZI: W3LL TH3N 1T’S 4 PL34SUR3 TO M33T YOU M1SS 1OP4R4  
SECILY: 10.g1 You can call me Secily. It’s fine. ...a6  
TEREZI: OHHH MY, ON 4 F1RST N4M3 B4S1S 4LR34DY?  
TEREZI: W3LL, 1F YOU MUUUST KNOW, MY N4M3 1S T3R3Z1  
SECILY: 11.e2 You already told me your name. ...b4  
TEREZI: 1 D1D?  
TEREZI: HUH. HOW 4BOUT TH4T.  
TEREZI: W3LL, 4S MY R1GHT H4ND OFF1C3R 4ND TH3 3X3CUTOR OF MY W1LL, 1 W1LL G1V3 YOU YOUR F1RST T4SK!  
TEREZI: 4ND L3T M3 T3LL YOU R1GHT NOW, 1T’S QU1T3 TH3 DOOZY!!!  
SECILY: 12.b1 I’m prepared for anything. Give me my assignment, please. ...xd3+  
TEREZI: OHH??? SO SUR3 OF YOURS3LF!!!  
TEREZI: B3L13V3 M3 WH3N 1 S4Y, TH1S T4SK M1GHT B3 YOUR H4RD3ST Y3T, 4ND YOU SHOULDN’T B3 SO QU1CK TO TH1NK SO L1TTL3 OF 1T!!!  
TEREZI: 4R3 YOU ST1LL CONF1D3NT?  
SECILY: 13.xd3 If I weren’t, I wouldn’t exactly be much of a right hand officer to you, would I? ...exd3   
SECILY: 14.xd3 Now stop playing around with me and tell me what you want me to do. ...e4  
TEREZI: OK4Y OK4Y OK4Y F1N3  
TEREZI: WH4T 1 W4NT  
TEREZI: FOR YOU TO DO M1SS S3C1LY  
TEREZI: 1S…  
TEREZI: ……..GO TO TH3 STOR3 4ND G3T M3 SOM3 R3D CH4LK  
TEREZI: 1 F33L L1K3 4 SN4CK M1GHT B3 1N ORD3R B3FOR3 W3 CONFRONT TH3 3N3MY!!!

Secily sips from her soda again, and wordlessly puts down her mug on a nearby table. She looks at you for a few seconds, before she squints her eyes in bewilderment.

SECILY: 15.exd4 ...You serious? ...cxd4


	5. Chapter 5

Stardust Crusaders: Tread onwards in the desert night.

ERIDAN: you knoww  
ERIDAN: for someone wwho wwas only evver a delinquent at school you sure are  
ERIDAN: uh  
ERIDAN: you sure seem to be takin the death of others a lot more easily than us  
ROSE: What do you mean?  
ERIDAN: well you knoww wwith like  
ERIDAN: i mean lets be real me and droog have both been through some circumstances wwhere cold blooded murder wwas absolutely on our minds  
ERIDAN: and the death of anyone who stood in our wway wwas basically collateral  
ERIDAN: this makes sense because of all the crazy shit wwevve been through  
ERIDAN: but you wwere ready to kill that other rose and that other john just like us  
ERIDAN: maybe evven moreso  
ROSE: Did you ever think that, just perhaps, I wasn’t actually all that willing to kill either of them in the first place?  
ROSE: That maybe I was, in part, acting tough? Because that was the only way we were going to get out of that with as little bloodshed as possible?  
ROSE: It was pretty obvious to me that John was going to vouch for a circumstance where everyone lives. But to ensure that they knew we meant business, I couldn’t simply agree with him.  
ROSE: Whatever I was doing, I needed to convince them that if they came for us again, they wouldn’t be so lucky. Even if I was ultimately unwilling to kill them.  
ERIDAN: hmmmm

You are Rose Lalonde.

You’re honestly still not sure how true everything you just said was. Rationally, yes, that would’ve made the most sense. To fool everyone - to make it so they were no longer a threat. It fit in pretty well with your personal modus operandi thus far, too - if you discount Gamzee, who you couldn’t give less of a shit about. 

But it’s not like you could’ve really predicted how things would’ve gone in that battle, could you? And when you were standing above that other John, clenching your bloodied fists, you didn’t exactly...

...You decide to not think about that anymore.

ERIDAN: okay so that all makes sense i guess  
ERIDAN: but

But? Does this guy really have to hound you about all this right now? Jesus.

You guess it’s still a ways off before you can find a town in any direction. There’s nothing else to really do but talk.

ERIDAN: wwhat really gets me is howw youvve been acting about the deaths of twwo people in particular  
ERIDAN: its no secret that ivve been takin the death of doc scratch harder than others because i felt responsible for his demise  
ERIDAN: but i can tell that dd and john both feel a little shitty about that wwhole ordeal too  
ERIDAN: and i cant feel the same feeling comin from you one bit

Is Eridan really expecting you to have any empathy towards Doc Scratch, of all people? There was literally never a single moment he didn’t give you creepy, fucked up old man vibes. Not to mention that your whole conversation with Damara, that nobody else could really decipher, came about as close to showing that the guy was a downright predator. 

There’s no way that you’d ever mourn that guy, even if he was actually dead.

ROSE: Again, it’s a matter of not letting enemies see you vulnerable.

You had Star Platinum check his pulse back in India. He was still alive. You kinda debated finishing him yourself, but you were waiting for John to revive, and you didn’t exactly want him to wake up to another real corpse.  
Besides, you still had ways to use the bastard. So it’s better to keep him alive in a hospital right now. 

ROSE: These people Jade are sending against us are equal parts ruthless and cunning. If they see any signs of doubt, any lingering hints of sadness, they WILL abuse that moment of weakness for all it’s worth.  
ROSE: You’ve already seen this happen. It literally just happened to us.  
ERIDAN: is that wwhy you dont seem upset about kan either

.........

Kanaya.

You know she’s not dead. You know for a fact that there’s no way she could possibly be dead right now, despite all evidence to the contrary. It is by far the most powerful gut feeling you’ve ever had in your life.

And even if she weren’t, you’d stop at absolutely nothing to bring her back. Even if it meant taking Jade apart and getting a vial of her vampiric blood to do so. Even if it meant tearing this entire timeline to shreds with as much power as you could muster, you would rip into causality and make sure Kanaya got to live at any cost.

ROSE: Pretty much, yeah.

For someone who you only met for a few minutes days ago, you feel a far deeper connection to her than you should. Perhaps that has to do with your connection to your other self, or other selves - but you don’t really care about it one way or the other. 

What matters is that you kill Jade, save your mother, and find a way to make sure Kanaya’s still alive. Then you can rest. Then you can take it easy.

ERIDAN: huh  
ERIDAN: okay then  
ROSE: Is that all you wanted to ask me about?  
ERIDAN: i mean  
ERIDAN: evverythin important i guess  
ERIDAN: im sure i could ask you a bunch of really stupid questions that dont actually matter  
ERIDAN: and im sure i wwould do that any other day but wwe did just get through a pretty intense fight  
ERIDAN: wwith wwhat im sure must be some fairly chillin implications  
ERIDAN: so im gonna assume you wwant to be left alone wwhen it comes to that stuff for noww  
ROSE: Actually, no.  
ERIDAN: wwhat  
ROSE: Ask me anything you want. There’s nothing else to do while we wander the desert tonight for decent shelter.  
ROSE: And contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing else I’d want less right now than to be alone with my own thoughts.  
ERIDAN: okay then heres my first fuckin question i guess  
ERIDAN: if you feel that wway wwhy not get john or droog ovver here  
ERIDAN: someone that annoys you less  
ROSE: I’d feel worse for dunking on them.  
ERIDAN: WWOWW okay asshole thanks for the vvote of fuckin confidence  
ROSE: Well, that’s actually a bit of a simplification.  
ROSE: I’m still not sure entirely how much I trust Droog, if I’m being honest.  
ROSE: Even if I’m technically certain of his trustworthiness, he gives off some strange vibes.  
ERIDAN: strange vvibes  
ROSE: Strange vibes.  
ROSE: Also, he has a very interesting habit of playing up his performance of business-gangster masculinity, which is fine, but makes him very boring to talk to.  
ROSE: John meanwhile…  
ROSE: Frankly, he’s more shaken up than this whole debacle than I am. And I’m already looking for distractions.  
ROSE: If he never thought about the past fight again, I bet it’d still be too soon for him.  
ERIDAN: wwhat does that evven mean  
ROSE: I don’t even know.  
ROSE: But the point is - John’s probably not in a great state of mind to come up with any good distractions for either of us.  
ROSE: And I don’t want to bother him. Which leaves you.  
ERIDAN: cool glad to knoww im the spare pick in all this  
ERIDAN: except that i guess i actually rate abovve droog in this friendshipliness dynamic or somethin so  
ERIDAN: i guess i am actually not too spare

The desert seems almost endless as you tread through the dunes with your comrades, with no end in sight. Maybe it’d be best to find higher ground at this point, if only so that you can come to the conclusion that you should rest for the night. It’s not like you have to worry about anything in the daytime - even the unfettered sun won’t be a problem with John’s wind powers. So you start walking, alongside Eridan, up the nearest dune in hopes of finding something - anything that isn’t just more empty dirty plains and sand - at the peak. 

On the other side is a dragon.

You immediately crouch down and hide.

ROSE: What the fuck. Why is there a fucking dragon here.  
ERIDAN: WWHY WWOULD I KNOWW JESUS CHRIST  
ERIDAN: holy fuckin shit i nevver thought id see one in the flesh this is absolutely nuts wwhat the fuck is happenin  
ROSE: Okay, okay. First of all, calm down. We need to stay calm, and...  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: Actually, fuck that. We’re skipping step one, there’s no way we’re gonna stay calm in this horrendously fucked situation.  
ERIDAN: wwhat???  
ROSE: What if we just went apeshit instead? Would that kill the dragon faster?  
ROSE: I didn’t even know dragons existed until two seconds ago! And now I’m absolutely confident in my ability to kill one!  
ROSE: It really is absolutely fucking hilarious how things work out, isn’t it!?  
ERIDAN: hold up actually didnt you just take on three stand users at once basically by yourself  
ERIDAN: by comparison this dragon doesnt actually seem like that big a deal  
ROSE: That’s exactly what’s freaking me out.  
ROSE: I think it’s just starting to dawn on me that the state of my existence is basically unrecognizable at this point, compared to my life a few weeks ago.  
ROSE: Life was normal, my mother wasn’t dying, her heart wasn’t the gateway to another god damn universe, my soul wasn’t manifesting as a naked purple super-boxer, and a ridiculously attractive vampire lady wasn’t ruining my life from halfway across the planet just by existing.  
ERIDAN: a ridiculously wwhat noww  
ROSE: Over the course of this journey, I’ve already tried to kill a clown and a clone of myself. Now I have to try to kill a mythological majesty I wasn’t even aware existed, and it’s easily the least weird thing that’s happened thus far.  
ROSE: So I’m starting to feel just a little bit on edge about this whole ordeal!  
ROSE: Why are we even running into a dragon if we can just cut its head off with your stand without any problems!? What the fuck is the point of all this!?  
ROSE: Why can I see the experiences of other versions of myself? Why does it seem so irrelevant past a few key visions when it simultaneously feels so integral to my being? Why can’t I make up my mind on how important my other selves are in the grand scheme of our current reality!?  
ROSE: It’s just...  
ROSE: This is...  
ROSE: ...This shit’s getting to me, is all.  
ROSE: More than I thought.  
ERIDAN: i uh  
ERIDAN: im gonna be real honest i havve no idea howw to respond to any of that  
ERIDAN: since it seems like youre delvving pretty deeply into some real big existential slash personal shit about life and the universe  
ERIDAN: wwhich is apparently not a singular thing  
ERIDAN: for either of those  
ROSE: I...I’d be surprised if you did know how to respond to any of this.  
ROSE: I’m sorry, it just...  
ROSE: It just burst out of nowhere.  
ERIDAN: honestly i do think i get some of it  
ERIDAN: i havve been havving some kinda wweird thoughts lately  
ERIDAN: not express visions of other selvves or wwhatevver youre talkin about but like  
ERIDAN: i dunno  
ERIDAN: sometimes i wwonder to myself if any of wwhat wwere goin through is real  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: I don’t know.  
ROSE: I don’t know if any of this is real. If any of it actually matters.  
ROSE: God, that’s such a weird fucking thing to say.  
ERIDAN: haha no kidding  
ERIDAN: heres the thing though  
ERIDAN: it doesnt really matter if any of this is real  
ERIDAN: because its real to us  
ERIDAN: to me and you and john and dd and your mom and even jade and her creww of wweirdos  
ERIDAN: and because of that evverything wwe do has meaning to us at least  
ERIDAN: right  
ROSE: I’ve certainly thought along the same lines.  
ROSE: It makes sense. It’s comforting. It’s logical.  
ROSE: And even still, I can’t shake this feeling that no matter what we do, we’re just going to be met with another storm of inane bullshit every day of our lives.  
ROSE: Like that fucking dragon on the other side of the hill.  
ROSE: And I’m exhausted.  
ERIDAN: ...  
ERIDAN: hey  
ERIDAN: rose  
ROSE: Yeah?  
ERIDAN: i knoww im not the best to help out wwith any of this  
ERIDAN: but i really think wwe need to keep fightin  
ROSE: ...Of course we do.  
ROSE: As much as I protest, I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I just stopped fighting.  
ROSE: At the end of the day, I still absolutely won’t rest until I make my way to Jade and save my mother, and...  
ERIDAN: awwesome  
ERIDAN: lets fuck this dragon up  
ROSE: Agreed. Let’s do this.

You take a step forward and find the dragon completely skewered by familiar crimson tendrils. Red fog seems to pour out of the holes made in its body, but it’s a surprisingly clean kill - no blood seems to have been spilled whatsoever. It’s actually kind of unnerving. 

As soon as you make your way down to the corpse, Droog greets you.

DD: Are you two done having your little moment of existential introspection?  
ROSE: Perhaps. You seem to have kept yourself busy by other means.  
DD: While you were busy worrying your little head, John’s floated up to the sky looking for the nearest sign of civilization, and I just inducted myself into the club of gangster dragonslayers.  
DD: It’s become pretty obvious to me that we’re the half of this team actually getting jobs done.  
ROSE: Well, you certainly did kill this dragon.  
DD: That’s the odd thing. I have reason to believe it was already dead.  
ROSE: What?  
DD: Well, it doesn’t have any blood. The neck already had a hole in it, as did the wings.  
DD: Dead giveaway signs that it was a corpse.  
DD: Pun unintended.  
ROSE: That’s more than a little disconcerting.  
DD: You’re telling me. Dragons aren’t even native to this continent.  
ROSE: They’re…  
ROSE: Hold on, what the fuck do you mean by that.  
DD: Someone hasn’t been paying much attention to their Australian wildlife class.  
ROSE: I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.  
ROSE: What matters is that there was a dragon, laying dead at this sand dune, with no signs of blood or struggle.  
ROSE: Nothing has come even close to this thing to feast on its remains - though perhaps that’s due to the low amount of life in this desert and the sheer intimidation factor this thing holds, even dead.  
ERIDAN: i mean i can clearly smell it rottin so its not like it wasnt dead  
ERIDAN: but i couldvve swworn it movved a little bit before wwe got here  
ROSE: Perhaps we were imagining that in our short bout of shock.  
ROSE: Unless, of course…  
ERIDAN: unless wwhat  
ROSE: Nothing, nevermind.  
ERIDAN: oh god damnit do not start wwith this ridiculous leavvin the truth until the pivvotal moment kinda schtick  
ERIDAN: i knoww you wwant your hypothesis to be provven dramatically or wwhatevver because evveryone does but lay off the tension for christs sake  
ERIDAN: cant you just tell us wwhat you wwere thinkin  
JOHN: hey guys!  
ROSE: Oh, hey John. What’s the good word?  
ERIDAN: (awwesome im just gettin ignored again wwhoop dee fuckin doo)  
JOHN: there’s a town full of windmills over in the distance! we could probably make it there pretty quickly if i flew us there!  
ERIDAN: hold up wwhy havvent you just been doing that the wwhole time  
ERIDAN: wwe couldvve not wwalked for wwhat feels like a literal fuckin year and instead wwe did for some ridiculously contrivved reason didnt wwe  
ROSE: It takes concentration and energy on John’s part to make people float in the air alongside him, at the same rate.  
ROSE: We don’t want to tire him out in case we get in a fight with another stand user.  
ERIDAN: oh  
ERIDAN: wwell fuck that actually makes sense  
ROSE: I still don’t think you should waste too much energy. Why don’t you fly me and Droog over to the town, and leave Eridan to walk?  
JOHN: you know, that WOULD be a little bit easier to manage, actually!  
JOHN: maybe we should do that, haha.  
ERIDAN: oh my fucking god you cant be for real  
JOHN: give us a little credit, eridan! we’d never do that!  
ERIDAN: rose might  
ROSE: He’s not wrong.  
ROSE: For real, though. What were you two doing while me and Eridan were having an existential freak out?  
ERIDAN: for the record it wwas rose havvin the existential freakout and me givvin uncharacteristically good advvice  
ROSE: Hush.  
JOHN: well, it’s kind of a long story?  
JOHN: and also kind of embarrassing.  
JOHN: and extremely stupid! very, very stupid. so maybe we could skip-  
ROSE: John, you are aware that these descriptors all make your experience more enticing and not less, right?  
DD: It’s not even that long.  
ROSE: What happened with you and Droog? Mind telling us on the way to the windmill town?  
JOHN: well…

—————————————————————————

Long Story: Be recounted.

You are now John Egbert, a few minutes into the past. In the present, you’d go on to tell Rose exactly what sorts of conversation took place between you and Diamonds Droog as you scoured the desert dunes for any signs of life, any breaks in the monotony, any distractions from the terrifying battle you just escaped from. But right now, it’s not the present. The present is past, literally, because the past is your present, because you’re Past John now. That’s how it is for people focused on by narration unbound by the linearity of time.

You’re not thinking about John Geil Egbert and how his sinister machinations and uncaring, murderous attitude seemed so far detached from your personal arc that he felt like a different person entirely. You’re not thinking about the John clone whose Wheel of Fortune Stand blew up your arm, or how Droog literally tore your heart out offscreen in order to restore you to full fighting strength via a manipulation of conditional immortality. You’re not thinking about how that second John made the exact types of choices you would’ve made and ended up doing pretty criminal shit for a smart lady friend who gave him an easy purpose in life. You’re ESPECIALLY not thinking about how you might be doing that right now, or how shady everyone is in comparison to Rose, who herself has already murdered you to achieve her own goals.

You’re an expert in emotional repression! Those thoughts are bottled safely on a precarious shelf in your mind, built with only the finest of Mind Ikea products, with only a few screws and tools missing. So, you know. You’re totally fine.

What you ARE thinking about is how to make things less quiet between you and the guy you’re walking with. You hate it when things are quiet. It means you’re alone with your thoughts, and you can’t have that.

JOHN: so uh.  
JOHN: droog, right?  
DD: Need something, kid?  
JOHN: dude, you’re like, two years older than me. are you seriously going to die on that hill?  
DD: It’s not a matter of physical age so much as it is your overall disposition.  
DD: I’m going to keep calling you a kid until it’s clear to me that you’ve grown into a man.  
DD: And frankly, I don’t ever see that happening.  
JOHN: that’s a really fucking weird way of saying that.  
JOHN: anyways, i just wanted to ask you about the adventures you’ve been on as part of the uh...  
JOHN: ...gang? that you were in?  
DD: The Midnight Crew.  
JOHN: yeah, that. tell me about the least violent interesting thing you’ve done.  
DD: That’s a tough one. Most of what we do ends with bodies hitting the floor.  
JOHN: then tell me the parts where that doesn’t happen!  
DD: Hmm.  
DD: A few months ago, we were actually trying to assassinate this one clown troll at a casino. He was giving Deuce a hard time at his new customer service job and got him fired.  
JOHN: i have no idea who that is, but that kinda sucks!  
DD: Frankly we didn’t care much about Deuce’s personal woes, but you don’t mess with a member of the Midnight Crew and live.  
DD: I was to infiltrate and act as the dealer for the target’s weekly poker game. Thanks to some sleight of hand and a few card tricks, I was able to deal him Slick’s Eight of Spades card.  
DD: The clown had two eights, but one was a double edged sword - literally. It shot up and almost skewered his neck.  
DD: Then Slick shot him with a magnum, making my job sort of pointless.  
JOHN: wait, so you tried to kill a guy with card tricks.  
JOHN: that’s...neat? minus the murder part, i guess.  
JOHN: you know, i’m actually something of a card trick guy myself.  
DD: Really, now?  
JOHN: i mean, a little, yeah!  
JOHN: i actually learned how to shuffle cards from my dad. he was kind of a master at it?  
JOHN: but the actual magic trick type things were stuff i had to learn from a book.  
JOHN: i was thinking of getting better at that, or at programming, or at piano while i was back on the golden ship for three years...  
JOHN: but it all felt kinda pointless?  
JOHN: like, i dunno. maybe i was too focused on surviving the game to really do the things that i used to like a lot before, but now i kinda wish i spent that time actually doing shit.  
DD: These are all things and people that I can’t possibly comment on.  
JOHN: haha, sorry, i guess i’m kinda bad at keeping track of who knows what myself.  
JOHN: anyways, i really do wish that i had the chance to grow up regularly, and get better at these card tricks, and maybe show my dad all the cool stuff i could do, and...  
JOHN: god, i miss my dad.  
DD: Mind telling me more about him? A man who’s mastered the art of shuffling can’t possibly be uninteresting.  
JOHN: honestly, he was kind of awesome! he left a bunch of really sappy but extremely supportive notes everywhere for me, even when i thought it was kinda tacky and dumb.  
JOHN: he baked me a bunch of cakes for my birthday, and put up a bunch of really shitty clown pictures everywhere because he thought i liked them for reasons.  
JOHN: and besides that he was sort of this very responsible businessman kind of guy who i guess got pretty excited over hats and pipes and routinely shaving and stuff.  
JOHN: and...i dunno.  
JOHN: i feel like i never really knew him as he really was. there was probably so much more to him that i never got to ask, or talk to him about, or learn about him, because i was busy being a stupid kid.  
JOHN: ...all the more reason to miss him, i guess.  
DD: Hmm. He sounds like a wonderful man, and a great father.  
JOHN: he was. :(  
DD: Was he single?  
JOHN: i...  
JOHN: w  
JOHN: what?  
DD: Your dad. Was he courting anyone?  
JOHN: oh my god that question just got even worse.  
JOHN: why would you be asking this, why in...  
JOHN: i just got done reminiscing about him! why would you assume that i wanted to talk about his relationship status, or like...  
JOHN: why would you even think he WAS single!?  
DD: Humans don’t really strive for perfection in their partners.  
JOHN: i’m sorry, what the fuck.  
DD: I get the feeling that he was, in fact, not in the process of looking for a mate.  
DD: A shame I never got to meet him.  
JOHN: droog what the fuck are you talking about!?  
JOHN: are you trying to like, subtly imply that you want to fuck my dad? is that what you’re doing???  
DD: Calm down.  
DD: That’s such an ugly way of referring to it.  
DD: First of all, I prefer the phrase “making love”. Second, I wasn’t implying any such thing.  
DD: Frankly he sounds like he’s out of my league. And if I were to make a pass at him, hypothetically considering that he isn’t alive, the idea of doing something like that wouldn’t cross my mind until a number of months had passed.  
JOHN: oh my fucking god. please stop talking.  
DD: You were the one who wanted to talk.  
JOHN: and i don’t anymore!!!!  
JOHN: how about i float up into the air and look for the nearest sign of civilization so that we can shut up about this???  
DD: Fine by me.  
JOHN: ...  
JOHN: ......  
JOHN: there’s a fucking dragon over there.  
DD: Fantastic. Let's murder it.

—————————————————————————

Crusaders: Arrive

You arrive in town after John finishes recounting, admittedly, a very stupid and embarassing conversation between him and Droog. You hope to yourself, in the deepest depths of your brain, that he doesn’t find himself attracted to your mother the way he’s attracted to John’s dad. It seems unlikely, yet the possibility gnaws at you, as if it were something of cosmic significance, or at the very least a strange joke whose significance claws at the outer edges of this reality.

The town itself is shrouded in fog. The sky is dark and covered in clouds, bathed in the usual black and purple hues of the night, but tinted with the slightest bit of red from the fog.

More red fog? That’s pretty fucking suspicious, isn’t it?

As you walk down the empty streets, more and more things begin to tip you off that the town itself isn’t normal, and that you best be on your guard. The layout of the town seems a little random. Despite the roads themselves being in a grid, the lampposts aren’t very well spaced out, leaving massive dark spots in the middle of the road where there absolutely shouldn’t be. The nearby gas station is open, but almost completely blacked out besides a solitary “Open” sign. Houses seem to be lined up sort of haphazardly along the side of the road, with stores in between them as if there wasn’t any care put into the city planning. And you still don’t know where that fog is coming from, or what’s causing it.

JOHN: that sign at the entrance said this place was called “fan town”.  
JOHN: honestly it’s kinda creepy, but not really the worst place ever?  
ROSE: Hmm.  
ERIDAN: wwell honestly at this point i dont fuckin care howw wweird the place is  
ERIDAN: lets just find a place to rest so wwe at least havve a bit of a home base if someone attacks us  
ERIDAN: wwho knowws wwe might evven get some sleep tonight if wwe play our cards right  
JOHN: i’m kinda hungry.  
ERIDAN: dude are you serious  
JOHN: i think we should indulge ourselves a little!  
JOHN: since we’re like, travelling the world and everything on this crazy journey.  
JOHN: i mean, we did go to the restaurants and stuff in hong kong, singapore, and india before this.  
ROSE: What kind of restaurants even are there here?  
ERIDAN: i think its literally just that mcbonalds ovver there  
JOHN: you mean mcdonald’s.  
ERIDAN: no that definitely says mcbonalds  
ERIDAN: i bet they didnt have more than one of any of those letters they put up there so they just had to make do wwith a b  
JOHN: okay, that’s pretty fucking stupid.  
ERIDAN: wwell hey dont look at me wwhen you say that blame the wworkers ovver there  
DD: If we really wanted to indulge in culture, we’d check out that fine art museum over there.

Droog looks towards a house next to the McBonald’s. On the door hangs a shining, ornate golden frame that one would put expensive art into. Framed is a piece of notebook paper that says “F1SHY B4ST4RD 4RT HOUS3 FOR F4RTSY 4RT 3NTHUS14STS” in large red letters.

JOHN: oh boy.  
ROSE: Honestly, all of these sound like good ideas.  
ROSE: Let me think.

Awaiting you in this town is a shitty knockoff burger joint, a dubious house of art and culture, and mysteries beyond your wildest imagination. 

What will you do?


End file.
